Solved – Mean or Median, Pearson or Spearman for Likert scale

Question

I have composited Likert scales from many items for some employee motivation variables.

what is the most suitable way to build the scale from discrete Likert items? is it using the mean or the median?

I need to study the correlation between motivation and burnout Likert scales or variables. what is the most suitable correlation coefficient for this case? Pearson or Spearman?

Thanks

Answer 1

To create a scale from several Likert items, people typically sum or average the items. This introduces a theoretical problem, since it involves assuming that the categories on the Likert items are equally spaced. But that's something most people can live with. Using a mean is useful if there are some respondents with some missing items. Using the median would be theoretically more responsible, but would probably result in less diversity in the scale values.

From there, you can use Spearman correlation, unless the data are bivariate normal, in which case Pearson is also appropriate.